


anarchist in love

by Mooncactus



Category: Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 07:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11893053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mooncactus/pseuds/Mooncactus
Summary: Lilit is hopelessly crushing on someone, and Deryn and Alek advise. Kind of.





	anarchist in love

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote 95 percent of this in February, so posting this now is ... surreal, lol. I wrote it after listening to the audiobooks, but I was finishing up my thesis film so I couldn't put on the finishing touches quite yet, and then oops it's late August........
> 
> I used to primarily be a Leviathan fic writer back on FF.net (Cardboard Edward!) so it was lovely returning to these characters, and writing out headcanons I've had for, ooh, 6 years? Hee. I will always love these books. Always. Enjoy!

“I need your help,” Lilit said, sinking miserably into the chair next to Deryn. They were sitting in the lobby of one of the buildings the Zoological Society owned in New York. Deryn hadn’t even realized Lilit was in that day.

“Aye,” Deryn said, putting down the research file she was reading for the society. Her eyes had glazed over ten minutes earlier and she had just been reading the same paragraph over and over, so she could use the distraction. “What’s the matter?”

She didn’t know what she was expecting - though if pressed, she’d probably have come up with something like needing help reading something in English, making a Molotov cocktail, threatening some man she found harassing someone … Lilit things.

What she wasn’t expecting was Lilit to tug on the edge of her braid, fingers curling anxiously, and slowly drag out the words like each one was causing her physical pain. “I … have … feelings, for someone.”

Deryn blinked in surprise, and then barked out a laugh. “I didn’t know you were capable of it,” she said, and her friend shot her an icy glare. Deryn held up her hands in apology, but didn’t take back the statement. In the year Deryn had known her, the only romantic interest she had ever seen the girl express was that kiss back in Istanbul, and she had never pressed for details about that, for obvious reasons.

The main obvious reason was loitering in the doorway, out of Lilit’s eyeshot, dark green eyes curious. Deryn dismissed him with a quick handwave and a very subtle shake of her head. He made himself scarce, and Lilit didn’t notice.

“I don't know why you're asking m _e_ ,” Deryn said, backtracking. “I mean, Alek and me have been together for less than a year -” ten months, to be more precise, and Alek had that amount of time memorized to the day, thanks to his Clanker brain. “I'm hardly an expert.”

She screwed her eyes shut. “That may be so, but I’m trying to … I was wondering …” she sucked in a big breath of air and then let it out, very, very slowly. Deryn raised her eyebrows. Was she about to have a barking _panic attack_? The girl’s breathing was even, but she just let a low groan instead of finishing her sentence.

“Spit out, lass,” Deryn said, peering at the knot of anxiety Lilit had managed to curl herself into. She would have patted her shoulder, but neither of them were in her reach. She settled for awkwardly tapping Lilit’s knee instead. Lilit gave a pitiful little sigh, and then tilted her head up towards Deryn.

“How did you know it was _real_?” Lilit said, finally, sitting up ramrod straight. “With Alek? That it wasn’t just infatuation?”

It was Deryn’s turn to exhale. Blisters, that was a tricky question. “It’s not like I hadn’t had crushes before,” she said, turning so she could look Lilit in the eye. “And that’s all I thought it was, for the first days. A barking _awfully timed_ one, but … he was the first good looking boy my age I had seen in months. And _then_ a week after we met I thought he was going to tell me he was in love with me…”

That caught Lilit by surprise. “I haven’t heard that one before.”

“That’s because I was being a ninny,” Deryn said, laughing. “He was just talking about enjoying life on the Leviathan, and didn’t know how to speak English without sounding like a proper _dummkopf_ yet. If any of the boys back home ever tried to tell me that they were in love with me - especially after a few barking days! - I would have punched them in the face for being daft. But when he said it ...” she sighed, tilting her head back. “I went positively moony. I sat up thinking about it _all bloody night._ ”

The misery on Lilit’s increased by several degrees, and Deryn reckoned the story hit close to home.

“That bad?” she said, and whistled. “Who’s the lucky m--woman?” she corrected herself, immediately.

Lilit nodded, but didn’t give a name. “How did you get over those other crushes?”

Deryn doesn’t bother telling her that it was a bit late for that, if this lass had got Lilit  this tangled up. “How’d you get over me?” she asked, instead.

Lilit blinked at this. “Oh, that was … I knew you were in love with Alek before I even knew you were a girl. It was never even a possibility. I supposed I was getting over you while I was starting to like you.”

Deryn tapped her fingers on her knees, legs crossed. “So you think you have a chance with this girl?”

Lilit’s brown eyes looked huge and vulnerable enough to rival Bovril’s - a disturbing look on a girl who was one of the few people who actually intimidated Deryn. “I don’t know,” she said, and then quickly added: “I just want to be over it.”

Deryn laughed. “Blisters, Lilit, it’s not the barking plague. C’mon, it can’t be so bad! Who’s the girl?” She tried to think of what women she saw Lilit with. Barlow, perhaps? She was smart, and pretty - for a boffin. And almost everyone had a crush on a teacher or mentor at some point in their lives. But Lilit seemed to think she had a chance, and that seemed to be a bit of stretch, seeing as she was married - _and_ there was whatever her thing with Volger was...

Then Alek poked his head back through the doorway, looking awkward. “Adela Rogers is--”

The reporter, dressed head to toe in sunshiney yellow, slipped in past Alek’s half hearted attempted to block the doorway like he was one of those revolving doors at fancy hotel. “Lilit,” she exclaimed brightly. Then she noticed Deryn.

“Ah,” she said, grinning. “This is where you’ve all been hiding!” She pulled a notebook out of nowhere and jotted down something, and Deryn frowned. Was it wise for Barlow to allow this nosy reporter anywhere near her secret society?

With whatever information she discovered penned in her notebook, she tucked it under her arm and pulled something out of her coin purse with gloved fingers.

“Two tickets,” Adela said, waving them the way a flamenco dancer would wave a fan. “To _Filibus_ , which, as you must know, is the talk of the town-”

“I’m busy,” Lilit said flatly, not even looking up.

Adela looked like the Labrador who lived next door to Deryn’s New York flat when he realized owner wasn’t home. “Whatever could be that important?” she asked.

“I’ve spent the entire day researching,” said Lilit. “I haven’t even stopped for lunch.”

She had done no such thing, of course, and her tone was bizarrely calm for someone who had just been on the verge of a girl induced panic attack. Did Lilit really find Adela that infuriating? Deryn could hardly blame her, but it was barking strange.

Adela marched right over, standing in front of Lilit. “I have to have this feature reviewed by tomorrow morning, and I don’t know anyone who’s commentary is quite so _scathing_ as yours. How can my work make filmmakers cry if you don’t come along to tell me how horrid the whole thing is?”

A smile broke across Lilit’s face, which she quickly caught and replaced with a grimace like someone had just told her she was spending the day cleaning up elphantine clart.

Deryn frowned, and her eyes caught Alek’s, who shot her a _look_.

And then the gears finally clicked in her daft brain.

She was amazed that Alek picked it up before she did - a second earlier, granted, but _still._ The boy was agonizingly slow with this sort of thing, as she knew all too well.

There was a honk from outside, and Adela scowled. “Oh, come off it-- alright, well, we’ll give you a few minutes to wrap up with your research, and then we’ll get to the theatre.” She started to keep going - maybe an answer Lilit’s increasingly dour looking expression - and then there was another honk and she jumped, grimaced, and marched outside. “ _One_ moment,” said said, while leaving. “Goodbye, Dylan! Goodbye, Prince Aleksandar!”

“Not a…” Alek began, and then sighed.

Once she was out of earshot, both of them turned to look at Lilit, who was looking resolutely at the floor.

“So, er,” Deryn said. “Was that what I think it was?”

Lilit looked up, looking green. She couldn’t quite meet Deryn’s eye.

Deryn blinked, unsure of what to say. Or - that wasn’t quite true. She had quite a few ideas of what to say - she doesn’t think any of them were good ones. She and Alek had had run ins with Adela in half a dozen countries over the last year - and she was still trying to fish for details about Dylan Sharp, the mysterious _bell captain._ She knew that she and Lilit had met - Barlow had an odd (in Deryn’s opinion) amount of patience for the reporter - but she would have never guessed that the two were friends, let alone ..

“Go on,” Deryn said at last, with a sigh. “She’s probably threatening her taxi driver by now.”

Lilit hesitated, and then picked up her coin purse from next to her chair. “Do you think..”

“Maybe we’ll all get lucky and she’ll do something to snap you out of it,” Deryn said, arms crossed. “But you’re not doing anyone any good by giving yourself a stomach ache thinking about it here.”

Lilit gave a little nod, and then tugged her purse strap over her shoulder and across her torso. “Thank you, Deryn.”

“ _Viel Glück_ ,” Alek said, and reached over to give her a hand a little squeeze. She looked at his hand, surprised, and then up at him, with a warmer look than Deryn had ever seen her give Alek before.  And then she was out the door in a sprint, calling Adela’s name.

Deryn and Alek stood there in silence, waiting a squick until they heard the main doors of the building close.

And then Deryn let it out. “ _Adela barking Rogers?”_

Alek shook his head in disbelief. “I thought she _loathed_ reporters.”

“Aye,” Deryn said, and sunk back into her chair. “I can barely stand Rogers, and I don’t take out a knife when someone cuts me off in a queue!” She shook her head, head still swimming. “At least she’s no longer calling you a Clanker spy, but… blisters, why _that_ girl?”

She and Alek had already had a talk, ages ago, about Lilit, and her interest in “Dylan”. So it seemed like that aspect was coming to no surprise to him, but…

Alek laced his fingers together, thinking. “I suppose if she makes her happy …”

Deryn narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know if _I_ can handle spending any more time with Rogers, though.”

Alek smiled. “Maybe there’s something we haven’t seen in her yet.”

They both pondered this for a moment, and then shrugged. Lilit was a daft anarchist - who could explain anything she did - much less why she would like a manic reporter who was her complete opposite?

She heard Alek clear his throat, and then watched him wet his lips.

“I didn’t know. What you told Lilit, about that night on the Leviathan ...” he clarified.

It took Deryn a second, and then she blanched. “Blisters,” she swore. “I was going to hold that one to my barking grave--”

“I had no idea,” he said, speaking over her in a way that was so unprincely she knew he had to have picked it up from her. “No wonder you were so cross with me that night. I’m sorry, Deryn, if I knew…”

“It’s good you _didn’t_. Your attic would have been so scrambled you’d probably never had made it to Istanbul.”

“I don’t know why I worded it like that,” he said, sounding baffled at his past self. “... Although…”

She looked at him, expectantly. “Although?”

“I have … considered, that I may have not have… had strictly platonic feelings for you, at the time.”

Her mouth dropped open, but he kept stumbling along, like he was worried he’d lose nerve if he stopped.

Alek started counting off on his fingers. “One, I kept making excuses to grab your shoulder or correct your stance or put an arm around you. A behavior I do not find myself repeating with any of the other young men in the Society. Two, I always was complimenting your appearance-”

She remembered _that._ It drove her mad - trying to figure out if all his talk of her being “handsome” or “dashing” could translate to her being attractive for a _girl._ “And?” she said, amazed at her over eager tone. Barking spiders, she’s been snogging Alek senseless for nearly a year now - what did a few extra months matter?

“There was … a dream,” Alek said, dragging out the words the way Lilit had earlier. He’d gone completely red, but the Alek from just a few months ago wouldn’t have ever admitted to something like _that._

“No,” she breathed in disbelief -- but not disgust. _“Really?_ ”

He winced, but soldiered on. “Yes. Not ... nothing too, uh, adventurous. But there was… kissing.” The former prince sighed. “I dismissed it as stress induced - it was a night or two after I arrived in Istanbul - and focused on blocking it out. It didn’t come back until a short while after we had been together.”

“Aye,” Deryn said, raising an eyebrow. “Your daft Clanker brain finally caught up, I reckon. How’d Dylan compare?”

“No contest,” he said, “although at the time I didn't know any better, and was… ah. Confused.”

“Now I see why you didn't condemn Lilit for her own preferences,” Deryn said, barely keeping her mirth in check. “I hope you're not planning on leaving me for a strapping young soldier once Dylan Sharp’s heydays are over.”

Alek fixed her a cross look. “I was _trying_ to make you feel better,” he said.

“I know, dafty,” she said. “It's just dead easy to tease you.”

He crossed the room, finally, to sit beside her. “No secrets,” he said, still a little red.

Deryn rubbed her mouth with the palm of her hand, trying to mask a smile. It was dead funny, if she was going to be honest. And … made her insides all fluttery. _Still._

Alek stood from the chair, a strange look on his face - like those moments of madness he still got, on occasion, after busting his head open on the Leviathan’s spine. “I suppose it’s not too late for a redo,” he said, and Deryn frowned.

“A redo of what?” she said, and then felt Alek put a comradely arm around her shoulder.

“I’m in love with you, Deryn Sharp.” His tone was teasing and dead serious at the same time.

Deryn tried to keep her own expressing mocking, her fluttering guts be damned. “Barely counts if you don’t stumble around looking for the words for five minutes,” she said. “And besides - that’s not exactly a secret. Between us, at least.”

Alek smiled at her, dark green eyes glittering. “I never said it was.”

He shut his eyes and closed the distance between them, kissing her in a way that never stopped being brilliant.

She broke away to give him a devious look. “I _would_ like to hear more about this dream, though.”

“Get stuffed,” he said, giving her a peeved look, and then kissed her again.


End file.
